Navigating the education sector as a startup founder can feel like a maze. The slow decision-making process, the need for innovative solutions, and the constant pivoting to meet real-world need. These are challenges Hamza Ansar and Start Up Early faced head-on.
Hamza Ansar’s and the team’s journey, from offering career guidance to students to creating a comprehensive Extracurricular Management System, is a lesson in adaptability.
Highlights
Identifying the Problem: Where It All Began
Q: How did you identify and engage with potential customers to validate your idea?
A: At Startup Early, the path to where we are today wasn’t a straight line—it was a winding journey full of pivots, challenges, and valuable lessons. What began as a B2C content channel offering career guidance to students has evolved into a robust extracurricular management system, a shift driven by constant feedback from the people we aimed to serve.
In the early days, Startup Early was far from the scaled operation it is now. Our team used to go to schools, delivering career guidance sessions directly to students. At the end of each session, we would collect a small fee from the students themselves. This direct, on-the-ground experience shaped what Startup Early would eventually become.
Q: What methods did you use to gather feedback (surveys, interviews, focus groups)?
A: Our interactions with students sparked the realization that schools needed more than just guidance—they needed a system to track and quantify the impact of extracurricular activities on students’ growth. This understanding was driven by constant feedback from the people we aimed to serve, including ongoing conversations with educators and administrators.
Q: How did you analyze market trends, competitors, and potential barriers to entry?
A: Initially, Startup Early worked with students to offer career advice, but as we developed manual extracurricular reports, we saw a new need emerging. Schools struggled to track and manage extracurricular activities in a meaningful way. Through ongoing conversations with educators and administrators, it became clear that we needed to pivot from our B2C model to a full-fledged SaaS solution for schools.
This is when the Extracurricular Management System (EMS) was born—a tool that would generate detailed extracurricular reports and quantify the impact of activities like coding, debate, and robotics on students’ skill development. The system helped schools link these activities to competencies across cognitive, emotional, and social domains, providing a structured and meaningful way to evaluate student growth.
Q: Did you pivot or refine your idea based on market research insights?
A: Yes, the pivot wasn’t immediate, nor was it without its challenges. We encountered hurdles in refining our product, understanding the intricacies of what schools truly needed, and navigating long sales cycles. One memorable moment came when our product development team worked tirelessly for a month on implementing a new scoring metric. Just as we were about to unveil it, our research team identified a crucial flaw in the formula. We had spent weeks building something that needed reworking, but instead of feeling defeated, we all laughed. It was a moment of resilience, a reminder that sometimes the path forward is about embracing the setbacks and moving ahead together.
Q: How did you secure initial customers or partners to validate your idea’s potential?
A: Today, Startup Early partners with educational institutions in three regions, with a base of more than 5,000 students benefiting from our system. Our pivot from career guidance to extracurricular management has allowed us to make a lasting impact on how schools track and value students’ out-of-classroom growth. We are still in development, and every step of the way, we remain agile, flexible, and committed to evolving based on the needs of our users.
Looking back, the journey has been anything but predictable, but each pivot has brought us closer to our mission: to help schools and students quantify and understand the real value of extracurricular activities. The lessons we’ve learned and the resilience we’ve built along the way will continue to guide us as we move forward.
Overcoming Business Hurdles: Lessons in Resilience
As Start Up Early and Hamza Ansar demonstrates, the key to success lies in being responsive to the needs of the market.
For education-focused startups, this means understanding that innovation and progress come through perseverance and a willingness to adapt. Startup founders who embrace this mindset will find themselves better equipped to navigate the complex startup landscape.
